Vendetta: Awakening
by Red Dead Wedding
Summary: Four heroes. A virus. A city without a prayer. A scientist with a spine of steel, a battle hardened warrior, a legend lost in the dark, and a woman with nothing to lose. Together they'll take on the toughest fight they've ever faced...and find what matters in the blood of battle. (Vendetta AU freestyle romance with canon ties) RebeccaxChris, LeonxJill.
1. Prologue: Awakening

**_PROLOGUE_**

* * *

 _"When I was a kid, I used to think about the kind of man I'd grow up to be…I never thought my life would turn out this way…" - Leon Kennedy_

* * *

 _ **Chicago –**_

 _ **Great Lakes University: Department of Virology, 2016**_

* * *

"What are you saying here, Professor?!"

The pixie pretty face looked up from her cup of steaming java chip latte. She was grinning huge and excited. The little lab coat she wore emphasized the ageless beauty of her. She might have been fifteen, she might have been fifty. Hers was the kind of birdlike sweetness that transcended long after traditional Hollywood beauty had fled.

And her excitement was contagious.

"I'm saying I've started simulating a vaccine."

Curious, the companion to the pretty thing lifted a rueful brow. "A vaccine? When you don't even know what the virus is?"

The adorable grin on her elfish face was infectious…sort of like the virus she was studying. "Oh yeah. Haven't we met? I'm Rebecca Chambers. I'm kinda a genius."

The laughter was loud in the small lab. The gathering of people increased to stare at the plethora of data that was wheeling over the small screen. Rebecca gestured with one long, piano playing finger. "That's right, feast your eyes on the future kids. A potential vaccine for the A-Virus. Anyone want to be a test subject?"

Just like that, the gathering dissipated. Amused, she watched all the labcoats flee like the building was on fire. Even her erstwhile suitor, Roger, fled like she'd farted on him. Rebecca chuckled a little and turned back to watch the data loop and flash.

She didn't know all the pieces to the puzzle. Not yet. But she was learning it, quickly.

It was time to send off a report to the World Health Organization and inform them of the progress. It was time to let the world know that there was hope. She sent the email and sipped her latte and loved the pride that came with each minty swallow.

And she had no idea the horror that one simple email would bring down upon her.

* * *

 _ **Washington D.C.**_

 _ **Ground Zero, Post Explosion – 2016**_

* * *

"I can't find any survivors! I can't find any one! Are they all gone?!"

"I don't know! I don't know! Keep digging in the rubble! Oh my god…oh my GOD…the whole SWAT team!?"

"No. NO. Just keep looking, John ok? Keep looking."

Movement. Shifting.

The dark and the pain eased around the voices. The cold was insane. The air on his face was the first sign…that he was STILL ALIVE.

"Oh my GOD!" Hands on his face. He was being rolled over. There was a shimmer of light as his eyes flickered.

The face in his vision…beautiful. Beautiful and unfamiliar.

Someone pumping on his chest and breathing into his mouth. And the world SNAPPED as he came back into his head and his body. He gasped, bowing, and the person exclaimed in relief.

Blue and gold. The shimmer of smoke and debris and despair around her. Her voice as her hands stroked his face. "He's alive! Get the fucking medic!"

"Who is it? Swat?"

The voice blocked the halo of light from around her head and irritated his semi-conscious mind. He grunted in disapproval. The voice echoed around them now and hurt his ears. "No! Holy shit! It's Kennedy right?! Leon Kennedy?! The director of the DSO?"

"Yes." Her voice. Her hands on his face. "Leon? Can you hear me?"

His voice was gravely but there. "Yeah…yeah I can hear you."

"Ok, alright. You're alive. The bomb…it decimated everything it touched. You're alive. How?"

He was shaking. She gathered him closer to hold him still. "….hid. Took cover. Van."

And now he could see her SMILE. Her SMILE. It made him warmer. She breathed, "Yeah you did. You hid. You did that. Survivor right? Smart guy. Saved your fucking life. You're the only one to make it. I'm going to make sure you don't die, Leon Kennedy. We've never met before. But us survivors? We have a way of finding each other."

He grunted and turned his face. It slid over her throat and he could smell her. She smelled like lilacs…and light. And fire.

His voice dragged out of his chest. "Who are you?"

The press of that mouth to his ear. The press of that gold on his skin.

The pain of knowing he was the ONLY ONE LEFT. "I'm Valentine. Jill Valentine. A shitty way to meet, Mr. Kennedy. But a good day to be alive. Stick with me, and I'll make sure you stay that way."

The ONLY ONE LEFT…it chased him down into the cold as the pain took him under.

And Jill Valentine's hands on his face offered little solace.

* * *

 ** _Queretaro Region –_**

 ** _Mexico-_**

 ** _San Juan del Rio, 2016_**

* * *

The effervescent night sky was disrupted by the rapid thunder of helicopter blades. The clouds met the whirring strength of each slice and dissipated, offering the view of the moon glimpsed vaguely within the milky depths. The quiet dark heralded the witching hour to the curious crew aboard the reflective vessel.

There was no peace in the dead of the night for those who waited within the small chopper. There was only preparation. There was on expectation of battle. There were only tremors of fear and discomfort. Nearly all of the small fighting force within the chopper was wet behind the ears about what they faced.

All were nervous about the unknown enemy that awaited their arrival. All…but one. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been afraid of anything. It had been so long that fear was nearly as foreign to him now as the country he was currently in. The terrain beneath them was almost as much a mystery as nervous expectation. He hadn't been afraid in so long that even the word rang false on his ears.

It had been too long and he was too old to be afraid anymore.

The heavily accented voice of an eager recruit told the quiet interior who the man was. The voice of an excited puppy laden with a thick Spanish lilt, "Yo! You're Chris Redfield, yeah? The big hero? The Raccoon City guy?"

He shoulder bumped the man beside him, "This is Chris Redfield! You know?"

The other man looked over with interest. Both were so young. Chris wondered if, when added together, they would even equal him in age. They were both eager and fresh faced. The first one that had spoken to him had a snappy little grin that was part hero worship, part infectious good will.

The other was big eyed with glasses and a small mustache. Again, he speculated that they were both barely out of highschool. If either was old enough to buy a beer at a bar, he'd eat his assault rifle.

The first man added, "Any advice on killing the undead? They say you're a legend. That you killed like a thousand zombies with a handgun and a shovel."

Chris shook his head, smiling a little. His gloved hands held the assault rifle loosely. He was geared differently than the rest of the paramilitary force that was accompanying him. International red tape had prevented him from bringing his own team on the rescue mission turned snatch and grab. So he was working in conjunction with local forces to bring in the target and secure the hostages. It rankled and didn't feel promising.

The team was young, for starters, undertrained to boot and clearly untested against B.O.W.S. He was going in with a handful of babies, a few nervous nellies, and a whole lot of cannon fodder. What choice did he have? The suggestion of going in alone had gotten him shouted at from the rafters. H.Q. was itching to smack him around for even offering it.

They were already one undercover agent down. God forbid he went in alone and got himself killed. The BSAA would never live it down. The "legend" killed playing lone ranger? Leon Kennedy would laugh him off the map for it. Kennedy was the only idiot that ever seemed to go in under gunned and alone and come out smelling like roses.

Chris wore his BSAA uniform topped by a bullet proof tactical vest and gloves. The other members of the team were in full riot gear from masks to boots to shields. For all the good it would do them, he appreciated the effort.

Chris shifted a little where he sat, "Listen…" His voice was gravelly and thick, highlighted by a face lined with age and experience. It wasn't a classically handsome face. It was a heavy jaw liberally scattered with a nearly full beard, which tended to happen after a week and a half of not shaving, and the suggestion of something dark and probably ethnic in his background. The name, Redfield, was English and simple. The heritage with the name was long and boring. But somewhere, at some time, somebody not so boring had lain down with something dark and exotic and walked away with a baby. It was evidenced in his gypsy dark looks and the swirling blue of his eyes. The eyes were lovely, topped by thick long lashes and heavy flattering brows. The lines that fanned out from them put him on the far side of thirty, potentially the early side of forty, and told the story of laughter, loss, and survival as did the scars that peppered over his neck and left ear.

Beneath the gear, the body was big and muscled, hairy and hard. The scars were plenty, the battles that had bestowed them legion, and the victories earned. He'd gone in, survived, and saved the day more often than he'd lost. The losses were there, and haunted him, but he'd kept on going. He'd been down, way down, and come out the other side. He kept on going. It was how he honored the ones he'd lost.

He just kept going.

He did so now, hoping to encourage those around him to do the same. "You got family?"

The eager one beside him nodded, "You bet. Gotta wife. Sister. Overly protective mother."

Grinning a little, the eager guy got an elbow bump from his cohort and a chuckle. Chris didn't echo the smile. He nodded a little and answered that amusement, "Yeah? What we're up against here? These guys have one agenda: to see your world in their image. They don't care about your wife. Your mother. Your sister. Your fucking dog. You keep in this line of business? You're gonna have one thing happen. Just one."

The eager guy didn't look happy now. And the rest of the team was passing attention now too.

Chris finished the statement, "You're gonna come up against the question of who lives and who dies. You or all those people you love. Because you'll lose them. In this business? You'll lose every single one. So chuckle about it all you want. Talk about the legend. Laugh with your friends. But it ends with everyone you love dead. And the only thing you have left is revenge."

The other guy beside the eager one whispered, " _Hijo de la chingada…_ why do it man?"

Chris held his nervous gaze, no flinching. "Because I've got nothing left to lose."

At the front of the chopper, the leader started talking. "We're approaching the objective. The mission parameters are clear: assist the BSAA in locating and acquiring the bioterrorist Glenn Arias."

Chris took up the charge, lifting his device in his palm to show data to the soldiers on the chopper. "Arias is a black market mass destruction weapons dealer. He'll deal it dirty, deal it quick, and to anyone who ponies up the dough. He started in guns, moved into explosives and heavy munitions, and has recently branched into bioorganic weapons or B.O.W.S. One of the BSAA's undercover agents: Cathy White and her son Zack have gone missing. Intel suggests that Arias has taken them hostage. The reason is unknown. But the objectives are clear: rescue Cathy White and grab Glenn Arias."

He shifted and rose to hold onto to the roof of the chopper. All eyes were on him now. Chris continued his briefing, steady and simple. "The BSAA sent me in to extract White. You won't find anyone with more knowledge of BOWS then me. I don't have the time or opportunity for some long lecture on the whys and wherefors here. So I'm gonna cut to the chase: aim for the head. If it's undead, if it's inhuman, if it's a dog or a frog or a fucking bunny rabbit – shoot it in the head. Disabling the brain stem is the only way to put down the walking dead. In the case of something like a hunter, or a BOW that is part man part monster, the face is still vulnerable. If there's no face? You have two choices –"

One of the female soldier's broke into his diatribe, "Run or die?"

And the chopper laughed nervously around them.

Chris nodded, stoic. "Yeah. Run or die or keep on shooting. So, maybe you have three choices. I will emphasize the importance of staying together. Don't turn your back on your team. Don't get nervous and shoot your companions. And don't go in there expecting anything human. Think of your worst nightmare, and expect that it might be in that building. Figure out that you'll be fighting for your life, and you'll just about be ready for anything."

The helicopter taxied down and landed gently in the wet grass.

The doors opened and the roar of the blades filled the air around them. The wind kicked up and tossed hair and clothing as they leaped free in pairs and threesomes. Chris took up the rear as they moved through the long dark.

The forest spilled around them in eerie shapes and sounds. A glance at his watch told him the witching hour was upon them. And in the distance, the rotting carcass of what might have once been a great mansion awaited them.

He considered it, watching the moon shimmer on the broken windows and along the peeling paint and he sighed a little. After all these years, couldn't a fucking bad guy…just once…not hide out in a creepy mansion? Just once? Was that too much to ask?

He gestured with his head and the team took up cover in the trees, watching the long two story mansion that awaited their assault.

Chris Redfield hadn't been afraid in a long time. He couldn't remember the last dose of it. Maybe it had been when Jill had gone out that window. Maybe it had been in Africa when Albert Wesker had come down those stairs. Maybe it had been when his team had gone down and turned in Edonia. Maybe. He couldn't remember anymore.

But something niggled in his throat as he looked at the specter of that mansion in the muted moonlight; something that might have suggested concern. Instinct? Or paranoia?

There was only one way to find out.

He signaled with his head and moved forward to confront that feeling. It was the only way he did things: he just kept going even when all his instincts were screaming for him to turn back.


	2. Chapter One: Arias

_**ONE:**_

 _ **ARIAS**_

* * *

 _"When I was a kid, I used to think about the kind of man I'd grow up to be…I never thought my life would turn out this way…" - Leon Kennedy_

* * *

 _ **Washington D.C.**_

 _ **John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital– 2016**_

* * *

"Has he woken up yet?"

There were shifting shadows beside his bed. His ears were hearing. His brain hadn't yet made sense of it.

The soft voice of the nurse answered, "No. They reversed the coma yesterday. The swelling is down and he seems to have full function of the arm."

"Brain damage?"

The nurse's voice again, "No. No signs of it. He took a hard hit to the head, for sure. But he seems to be fine now. It's probably the drugs keeping him under for the moment."

There was a shift of movement again above him. And that voice came, gentle, but commanding, "Mr. Kennedy? It's Jill Valentine. I need you to open your eyes for me."

His lids fluttered. He liked her voice. His eyes opened, blood shot, but clear. She touched his face in the dark, punctuated only by the light from the hallway.

"Mr. Kennedy - you gave us all a scare. Your throat will be sore from the intubation. Do you know where you are?"

He licked his cracked lips. His throat was so dry. His voice was hoarse, "D.C."

"Yes. Exactly." She shifted. Blonde hair trailed over her forehead from her bangs. She poked it behind her ear, smiling at him, "How do you feel?"

His laugh was as dry as his mouth, "Dead."

"You're not, I assure you."

He shook his head. He closed his eyes briefly, "No...my men are. All my men are dead."

The bed sank. The hand on his face stroked, gently. He opened his eyes again.

And she was sitting beside him on the bed. Her voice was cool and supportive and strong, "Not all of them. You're still here, Mr. Kennedy. Still here. All you can do now? Is honor them by living."

It was a good thing to say.

A good thing.

And something he'd said once to a man who'd wanted to die and end his suffering.

Before Leon had shot him and severed the plagas in his body...and left him paralyzed from the waist down forever.

Honor them, he'd said, by living.

Leon made a small sound of pain. Jill shifted and pressed on his chest and shoulder, "It's ok. It's alright. You fractured your collarbone and broke your arm in three places when the debris crushed you down. You're ok. I promise. It'll heal."

Leon shook his head, gently. "Will it? Fuck. What am I doing here? You should have left me in the fucking rubble with my men."

She eyed him, coolly and answered, "Don't be a coward. And don't talk like that ever again. You know what we do. You know why we do it. You know why we have to get up and keep doing it. Fall down, hurt, and get back up, Mr. Kennedy. The world can't save itself."

He laughed, lightly and humorously, "I can't save the world, Ms. Valentine. I'm just the idiot that trusted the wrong guy."

She touched his chin and held it, hard, when he tried to look away. Entranced, he kept staring at her.

She said, sharply, "I'm the idiot that jumped out a window and died to fail at killing the wrong one. I get it. I _get_ it. But don't. Don't self destruct. Mourn it. Learn from it. Ache with it. And get back up. Don't let your story end with a pistol in the mouth. You're too good for that. For every person you lose, there's thousands you've saved. Remember _that -_ and get back up _."_

He smiled, lightly. His hand turned over on the bed and she gripped it, palm down.

Leon whispered, hoarsely, "I need to go see them. I need to make sure they're...at peace."

She understand that. She did. Hadn't she done the same with Brad Vickers in Raccoon City? Hadn't she done the same in the Mansion each time she'd seen a fallen teammate?

And so she answered, "I'll go with you, Mr. Kennedy."

He was so used to being alone. He didn't know what it meant that he wasn't anymore.

He whispered, "It's Leon, Ms. Valentine. Just Leon."

"Just Leon...all my friends call me Jill."

"Are we friends now?"

She held his eyes in the quiet darkness, "We're about to go put down your brothers in arms together, Leon. I'd say that makes us pretty fucking good friends."

His fingers slid between hers and held.

And he'd never agreed with anything more in his life.

* * *

 ** _Queretaro Region –_**

 ** _Mexico-_**

 ** _San Juan del Rio, 2016_**

* * *

The world narrowed. It went small and swiveling.

It was man vs man. _Mano-a-mano._

It was hero vs villian.

Age old combat. Age old story. Age old underdog meant to rise again.

His men were dead. His team was gone. His body was broke and sore and bleeding. He'd lost his gun and was done to his last knife.

He could run. He could turn tail and flee. Lesser men had done it. Lesser men had lived to tell the tale of the battle they'd lost.

He was Chris Redfield.

He didn't run.

He didn't even know how to run.

His fingers curled around the hilt of the knife and lifted it in a defensive position.

Amused, the man across from him grinned happily. Glenn Arias.

For a moment, in the beginning, hunting Arias had been business. It was just what you did when you were the good guy. You took down the bad guy. But now?

Now it was personal.

Now it was done.

Chris spit the words between his teeth in the rolling darkness. The handsome face of the killer in front of him was mocking above the natty little top coat and tie he wore like a prince. "You bastard. Having a good time?"

"Oh, monstrously, I assure you. I enjoyed killing your men. I don't generally, as a rule, I prefer to sell death as opposed to deliver it myself...but alas, you left me little choice," He sounded so reasonable. So polite. Just two guys having a friendly chat on a windy night.

Inside the mansion behind them, all those men had died in a blood bath. Things like Chris had never seen had erupted in naked bone and gore, in blood and horror, to eat them in a screaming, swirling, handful of minutes that he could hardly believe.

Twenty five men, dead.

The boy, Cathy's son, turned and infected. He'd raced. He'd snarled.

Chris had tossed a grenade into the room and slammed the door to hear him explode.

Burst of light, brush of blood, gush of breath and explosion.

Silence.

Horror.

Hate.

It boiled in him now like lava.

"Enough gossiping like little girls. Finish it." Chris snarled it and waited.

Arias shrugged boredly and lifted the gun he'd claimed.

The first half of the battle was his, no question. Chris had landed from a desperate jump through the window. He'd risen to find Arias waiting for him.

Hand to hand, Chris Redfield was unstoppable. Unbeatable. Unbelievably fast, trained by some of the best in the world. Glenn Arias had made it a comedic sport to kick his ass.

A roll, a dive, a drop and a kick. A slap to the face that smarted and stung in the pride and the soul. He'd punched and deflected, kicked and bested, and driven Chris across the grass with barely breaking a sweat.

They faced each other now. Arias with the empty rifle. Chris with his knife.

It didn't scare him.

He'd faced worse odds in his life.

He'd stood at the bottom of a volcano versus the mutated body of his former Captain. He'd won that battle. And he'd never been more of an underdog.

They moved, in tandem, two men with nothing to lose.

A swipe, a step, a spin. Arias hit him in the chest with the rifle but his vest absorbed the blow. He hooked left, ducked right, and the blow sent the white haired man staggering. He tossed an impression smile over his shoulder and circled back.

"Anger makes us strong it seems. Tell me, Chris is it? What's worth fighting for? Your men are dead. Your job is lost. Give up. And go home alive."

Chris feinted back as the gun swooped over his head. He rolled under the next swipe and spun the blade in his had. It arced, it twirled almost like a dance, and sliced clean through the tie of the man facing him.

Arias spun back, laughing now. "Brave and stupid. Such is the way of things. Alright then, no more playing it seems."

He drove the gun toward Chris' face and the other man went right, thrust the knife at his gut, and got the butt of the rifle to the jaw for it. There was a flash of pain, a gasp of surprise as the knife sunk into Arias' side in the rush of it. And Chris reeled back.

He turned to avoid a punch to the face, Arias whipped him in the arm with the gun and he lost the knife, the wet pop of his shoulder signaled Chris was now down an arm, and Arias kicked him in the ass for it. Chris' arm, dislocated now, dangled and he tried to sweep a kick - but Arias grabbed at his thigh holster, pulled his side piece in the thick of the moment, and shot him twice in the back.

The gun echoed in the quiet night.

The vest took the hit but it hurt like a buffalo kick.

Chris went down on his face in the dirt. His dead arm flopped uselessly and he grabbed it with his other hand, binding it to his chest to brace it.

Above him now, Arias tilted his head like a dead, "Uncle?"

Chris spit at him again, at his feet, "Son of a bitch. Finish it."

"Hmm. I'm a business man, Chris, that's it. Really. Just a business man. I make quality products available to capable buyers for a reasonable price. It's not personal. It's business. In fact...the annoying part here is that I have to move my business now because of you. So, for that, I think you see what your arrogance has bought you."

The shadows shifted.

Bane from Batman came out of them.

No. Not Bane.

But _close_.

Beside him was Trish from Devil May Cry.

No. But _close_.

On the ground, Chris hissed, "What is this? A fucking video game? What's next? Pyramid Head?"

Arias laughed, delighted. But it wasn't Pyramid Head. It was Cathy White.

Dead.

Cathy - infected.

* * *

 _She rolled to her back, laughing. Her hair spilled dark in the sunlight. It left the shadows on her face like kisses of color._

 _"Stop. I mean it. Don't take my picture."_

 _Her mouth was soft beneath his._

 _"Why? Afraid I'll put it on Instagram and Zack will see it?"_

 _"Not Zack; no. But John? Maybe. Maybe John. You think I want him showing up here in a jealous rage?"_

 _He laughed. She shifted to let him closer to her. Her hands gripped in his hair._

 _"I can take John White. You kidding me? He's a gym teacher."_

 _"Oh, yeah? According to my Facebook page: I'm a Scientist."_

 _"What? Do a status update and change it to: Secret Agent. Why hide it? Let the world know."_

 _She laughed, eyes soft and beautiful. He kissed her again, light. And she remarked, "You're an idiot, Chris Redfield. I'm only sleeping with you because you're my boss."_

 _"Sexual harassment hard at work folks."  
_

 _He snapped the picture with his phone. She laughed and hugged him._

 _It was the last time he'd see her alive._

* * *

On the ground, frozen, aching - he breathed, "Cathy? Cathy! Why?!"

Above him, Arias smiled sweetly, "You know why. Of course, you know why. Her name was Sara. She was my world. And now? I've taken yours. The thing about my products, Chris...is they know the difference between friend..." He touched Cathy's rotting face and she didn't care. She didn't bite him. She just stood there snarling like a dog.

A dog on a chain bound by Bane from Batman.

Flanked by Trish from Devil May Cry.

While Chris Redfield lay on the ground bleeding and dead inside.

A video game indeed. The kind where the hero loses.

And there's no hope left.

"...and foe...my gift to you...for Sara...farewell."

The chain was jerked free. Bane and Trish and Arias walked casually among the dead that began to pour out the building around them until they were swallowed up by the smoke.

Cathy snapped her jaws. She staggered and hunched, hissing and jerking spastically. She came at him slowly, hungry and moaning.

Chris tried to crawl over the ground. He pushed to get to his feet and his leg he'd enjoyed in the fall protested it and spilled him back down.

So, this was it. This was how he died, his face eaten by his former lover.

His team dead.

The good guys had to lose sometime, it seemed. Why not tonight?

Helicopter blades whirred. They swirled the air and the dirt around him.

The sound of a heavy machine gun firing up drew his attention.

Two feet from him, Cathy was blasted by 50mm fire. She was blown back and off her feet. She was thrown to the ground in a bath of blood. The rest feel easily, moaning and dropping. The gun took out Arias storehouse beside the mansion. It erupted in a geyser of flame and failure.

The night was burning around him now. The world was on fire.

He crawled to Cathy.

He turned her in his arms.

 _"Tell me this doesn't end badly, Chris Redfield."_

 _In the alley, a little drunk, his hands on her face to kiss her. The man who never touched his co-workers. The guy who never crossed the lines._

 _"It ends with us together, Cathy. Stop fighting. Sometimes? You just have to give in."_

Her eyes stared blindly from the bloody mask of her face.

Dead for Sara.

Dead for revenge.

There was no where on Earth Arias could hide now. Nowhere.

Chris Redfield had chased Albert Wesker for over a decade to stop him. He didn't run. He didn't stop. And he didn't give up.

It was personal now. It was done.

It was more than revenge.

It was a vendetta.

And the sound of his anguish trumpeted like a battle cry into the burning night.


	3. Chapter Two: Dr Chambers

_**TWO:**_

 ** _DR. CHAMBERS_**

* * *

 _"When I was a kid, I used to think about the kind of man I'd grow up to be…I never thought my life would turn out this way…" - Leon Kennedy_

* * *

 _ **Chicago –**_

 _ **Great Lakes University: Department of Virology, 2016**_

 _ **4 Months Later**_

* * *

The monitors continued to flicker horror at her. She sat, the cup perched on her knee, the steamy scent of mocha in her nostrils, and she waited to make sense out of what she was seeing. Sadly, it was like trying to make sense out of a Jackson Pollack: Impossible - seeing as it was just a big ol' mess.

Rebecca watched the data on the screen beside the video feed. A woman on the ground, fighting away her attackers as they beat her to death with their bare hands. And the fluctuation of data with statistics on experiment 252. She was CLOSE. She was so close.

She could feel it in her belly. When she got close to breaking a virus, she got cramps. It was...sorta silly in a way, but no less true. She felt like she might have to take a shit or something every time the computational chemistry upped a fraction of a percentage toward victory.

This one, this virus, it was different.

They all were, in a way, derivative of the T-Virus. The "tyrant" virus had been the source of her study for so long it was basically ingrained in her bones. The strain of the original Progenitor was the culprit behind so much destruction that it was nearly a force unto itself in bioterror. This wasn't T. It wasn't. What was it? What was the trigger?

What was the source?

The "A" virus. She knew that much. She'd gleaned enough to begin formulating a vaccine. But a vaccine wouldn't stop it. She had to stop it. To stop it, she needed to know what "it" was.

She was attempting to suppress the artificial virus here because it seemed to be the base of the infection. But what was the cause?

There were more questions than answers.

Rebecca tilted her head and a voice queried, "Again? How many times can you watch this shit?"

Her lab assistant, Aaron, was standing at her shoulder holding a Starbucks cup. She squeaked with excitement and put her hand out. The mug in her hand was discarded to sit forlornly on her desk as she accepted the gift of good java. "Caramel macchiato?"

Aaron, laughing lightly from a hang dog face of adorable mismatched features, rolled his eyes, "You bet. Non-fat, soy milk with whip cream."

"Chocolate chips?"

Again, he laughed, "You bet. Although, FYI- that's dessert in a cup, not coffee."

"Dually noted." Rebecca sipped it and sighed. Aaron stepped over to study the data on the screen.

"Jesus, I wish we could figure out what's causing the aggression."

Rebecca rose and stood beside him, watching the screen with four different attacks now. All over the great lakes, people were being attacked and eaten. Why? She spoke, softly, verbalizing her internal thought process for Aaron.

"The T-Virus was predictable...it's always predictable. I mean...the C-strain engineered in China was as close to this kind of aggression as I've ever seen. T causes hunger, sure, it causes cannibalism in its host...but this? This is violence. It's rage. And it seems to be controllable."

Aaron nodded, gesturing to one screen, "I see that. Look how he stops attacking this woman to focus on the man. He halts in mid hit. You ever seen a zombie do that?"

"No," Rebecca shook her head, looking academically intrigued. "It's how we know T isn't the base. The T-Virus was mass produced. It's made to infect large populations. It's perfect for blanket bioterror attacking because the basis of the contagions' tendencies to kill too many people at once and prevent further spread to unnecessary hosts. It leads to organ failure and brain damage causing obsessive hunger and need to feed. But this?"

Rebecca watched the attacker kill the man, look at the woman he'd left, and not finish her off. It was unheard of. It was shocking. He simply didn't kill her. He had enough PRESENCE OF MIND to leave her alive. It was the perfect weapon, in a way. Someone had engineered a virus that allowed the infected to make decisions based on their own wants.

Unheard of.

From a scientific standpoint, Rebecca couldn't fail to be impressed. It was Marcus and Birkin and Spencer's greatest revelation here. Only? It wasn't related to their work at all.

Which meant there was more evil in the world than the kind that had taken up residence in Raccoon City.

A frightening truth.

Aaron mused, "You know we have like thirty more infected corpses down in the morgue waiting to be examined."

Rebecca glanced at him, brows lifted, "Where's all the students?"

"On break, clearly. It's just up over worked, under paid academics on campus right now."

She blinked prettily at him until he said, "No. NO. No way! I'm post doc, I don't do the grunt shit, Rebecca. Seriously?"

"Come on, Aaron! Please? I have fifty different simulations to run before lunch. And we're on the edge of a break through here...I can FEEL it." She gave him puppy dog eyes until he laughed, shaking his head.

"Fine. FINE. Whatever you say, _Professor_."

Rebecca grinned and took her seat in her chair, turning to her computer, "Thank you so much, Aaron. I love you!"

"Yeah, yeah. Save it for dinner. You're buying right?"

"You bet! Marco's Pizza?"

"Hell, yeah. Lots of onions."

He left the lab and Rebecca rolled over to read the print out from the WHO. Behind her, the screen with her experimentation data gave a warning bleep. She turned, watching it flash.

It politely told her that the sample was COMPLETE.

Her heart stopped. It stopped in her chest.

And the screen informed her: PROTOTYPE VACCINE PARTITIONED AND TRANSFERRED TO SYRINGES IN STORED REFRIGERATION UNIT. Beneath her breath, an excited burst of sound, "...Hell...yeah."

A good moment...followed by a bad one.

An alarm went off. The shutters behind her snapped shut. The red of emergency lights replaced the overhead lights in the darkness that spilled around the lab. A voice informed her: Contamination at 60%, please be advised of quarantine procedures.

For what?

And than the air was full of the answer to that question.

Rebecca gasped. She felt it hit her lungs and spread into her brain, she felt it pour down her throat and into her guts. She felt it hit her central nervous system and explode like a grenade in her conscious mind.

She went to one knee, gasping, shaking, struggling.

No.

NO.

She whispered, "Oh, god..."

And she crawled. She threw off her lab coat when it restricted her speed. She stumbled, she staggered, she hit the wall beside her and slid against it. The door before her raised on a hiss of hydraulic sound.

Like the zombies she'd spent her life fighting, feeling the infection spread from her blood to her bones, Rebecca stumbled down the narrow hallway while the fog of disease filled the air around her. She gasped, she grappled at the wall to keep upright, and she fought against falling down and staying down. This was how she died? This?

What was "this"?

It was a targeted attack. But why?

Who?

No, she thought...not who...but WHO. The World Health Organization. She'd sent them data.

And someone was making sure that data died with her.

She hit the button on the door beside the refrigeration unit. She staggered inside, gasping, head spinning. Her eyes were losing focus. Her throat was swollen shut. She was, rapidly, asphyxiating.

She smacked clumsily into the side of the tank where the samples were stored. She pressed her palm to the plate and waited. It seemed like a million years...it was barely a moment.

She went to one knee, dying, dying, dying...even as she grabbed the sample and shoved it into her skin. She hit the trigger on the plunger and felt it hit her system like a slap. She gasped. She went to her back. She spasmed. Her body jerked and flopped and fought.

She felt her heart...STOP.

She clawed at her chest as if to restart her own organ...and the world eased off. The fire died in her blood. Her throat opened and she dragged a painful gasp of air that wheezed and hurt. She felt tears of relief sting her eyes.

Rebecca rolled to her hands and knees, rasping, gasping, and shaking.

She watched the veins on her hands restrict and retract as the virus was beaten back by the vaccine.

It worked.

Whatever else was true. Whatever else she didn't know. Whatever else was behind this...one thing was true. The vaccine WORKED.

Rebecca staggered to the console beside her and typed in her credintials. She waited, breathing, and clicked on a few keys. She copied all her research data and the vaccine data to a thumb drive. She poked it into her pocket and deleted it. She didn't just delete it, she wiped the drive.

She knew, in her fucking bones, that whoever was here - was here for her research. Maybe that was a little narcissistic, maybe it was placing too much importance on herself, but she doubted it. They were here for her data. And they'd have to kill her to get it.

Rebecca eased into the hallway again, judging the distance and time it would take to get to her car.

She didn't get far. She didn't get anywhere at all really.

Because Aaron was waiting for her. But he wasn't Aaron anymore. He was, however, eating another scientist on the floor in front of her.

Rebecca made a small sound of fear and his head came up. It turned, it was profile to her, and it was Raccoon City all over again. It was the horror of that night and trying to stay alive. It was the fear that never left you alone to sleep, to eat, to wake or fuck or want. It was there, in his face, as he turned his bloody countenance to her and snarled.

Hopelessly, she whispered, "...Aaron?"

And he attacked, roaring for her blood.

Rebecca shouted and kicked from the hip, hitting him in the stomach to spin him around. As he came for her again, she ducked and ran down the hallway. Aaron gave chased, snarling like a dog.

She wasn't going to make it back to her lab, nope. She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall beside her and turned, shouting with rage. There was an acronym for using a damn extinguisher, it was lost to her in this moment of horror and survival, but it had something to do with Aim and Spray and Sweep. So she did all three: right at her former friend.

Aaron got a face full of spray, sputtered, and kept on coming.

She stopped spraying him to hit him in the face with the heavy canister. It crunched his face, he snarled and shoved his body at her to knock her around, and Rebecca whipped the container in a circle like a discus thrower. It smashed into his face and sent him to his hands and knees.

With a battle cry, Rebecca raised the extinguisher over her head and brought down on the back of his. His skull made a cracking sound and the next strike was a squelch and a crunch of death. Rebecca screamed with rage and felt his blood splatter all over her face and her hands and her vest. She kept on hitting him until he was on his face on the floor in a pool of his own blood, his own brains, and his own destruction.

She was panting, she was gasping, she was making some kind of sound of fear and horror.

She tossed down the extinguisher and backed up, shaking.

Jesus.

She hadn't been the person in the fight in a long time.

She'd forgotten the fear that bred and bled like poison when you were faced with your own survival.

It ate around her brain and left her breathless. Rebecca turned and hurried into her lab. She dug at her desk for her keys and reached for her pocketbook...and heard it.

Too close.

Too fucking close.

Someone exploded through the glass window beside her. The window spiderweb cracked and shattered, throwing shards and sharp torture at her as the body came barreling through, snarling.

Rebecca shrieked and dove forward. She clamored under the desk beside her and missed losing a chunk of her leg to the amorous mouth of her attacker. The snarling former doctor spilled into the room, trapped on the shattered glass that was currently impaled through his gushing groin, and grabbed for her under the desk. His fetid breath hit her face, Rebecca screamed in fear, and her hand grappled atop the desk in the open drawer.

She was looking for ANYTHING. Anything at all. ANYTHING useful as a weapon. A fucking pencil would work, she mused, she'd John Wick the SHIT outta this guy if she could find a pencil.

Instead, her hand closed on a pair of scissors.

And Rebecca shouted, "BINGO!"

She reared back, listening to him bisect his own upper body from the lower half on the jagged glass impaling him, and he fell atop her with a scream of hunger.

Shouting, Rebecca shoved the scissors into his blood shot eye, his teeth scraped her face, and he collapsed atop her with a gush of blood and breath.

With a sound of fear, Rebecca watched other bodies begin to climb into the lab where his lower half was still suspended on that jagged piece of window. Two, three, four...she was screwed.

SCREWED.

She shoved at the body atop hers, desperately, scrambling backward on her elbows and feet as they came for her.

One grabbed for her face, Rebecca jerked the scissors free of the dead guy to fight for her life, and the sound of a pistol had her squeaking with fear.

The forehead of her attacker erupted in a spray of blood and spilled all over her like a mean kid spitting. She made a gasp of horror and wielded the scissors madly until the face appeared above her.

"Rebecca?!"

With the scissors pointed upward like a sword, Rebecca tilted her bloody face. "...Chris!?"

It was indeed, she thought, her former comrade in arms with a big assault rifle and a pretty adorable beard.

He put his hand down to her, the former S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team sniper, and mused, "You gonna snip me?"

Her laugh was weak but breathy. Her eyes slid two inches to the right of his face and she bipassed his hand entirely. He barely had a second to blink and she grabbed the spare piece from his thigh holster, jerked it clean, and lifted it on him.

Chris hesitated to aim back at her and that handful of seconds was all he got.

She fired from her back on the ground.

He waited to feel it.

A second ticked into two.

And he realized she'd shot, not him, but directly over his left shoulder.

He turned to watch the body collapse to its back on the ground behind him, sporting a pretty third eye made of bullet and blood between its other two. Lab mouse, he thought wildly, with DEAD AIM. She put one into the forehead of his attacker without a seconds hesitation.

It was pretty impressive for someone who hadn't fought the good fight since Raccoon City.

She took his hand now and he jerked her up from the floor.

They both held on to their guns.

And Rebecca gasped, shaking, "What the HELL are you doing here?!"

He started to answer and she grabbed his vest. He let her jerk him forward and aim around his side. She shot twice and he spun low, curled an arm around her to pull her down and put her behind him, and he picked off the third one that she didn't take down.

Rebecca didn't miss the slight shift of his body that put him in front of her from the crouch he was in.

From their crouch by the desk, she whispered, "The lab is over run."

He nodded and they listened to the gun fire of the rest of his team. "I noticed. Good thing, I didn't come alone."

And he grinned at her.

There was that, Rebecca thought, that wicked boyish charm of his. It was what kept her alive and laughing in the Spencer Mansion all those years ago. Paired up by circumstance and survival, they'd managed to make each other laugh and become pretty decent partners while they searched for Jill, Barry, Wesker and the truth.

To amused them both, Rebecca responded, "You usually come alone, big guy? Sounds like a pretty shitty Friday night."

And he laughed. He laughed and had her feeling, just a little, like she hadn't just had her world implode around her.

He touched her bloody chin and turned it into the light, "You ok?"

She was covered in blood from someone she'd once had sex with. She was mourning the loss of most of her coworkers and alot of her friends. She was pretty sure they were dead because of her and her research.

She was crouched in the blood of the very dead Dr. Mortimor from genetics research with Chris Redfield.

But she was alive.

Was she ok?

She wasn't dead.

So maybe that meant she was ok.

She wanted to fall against him and weep. But she was long passed the girl that clung to a man to fix her fractured world. She wasn't eighteen anymore. She didn't need Chris Redfield to save her...despite the fact that he just kinda had.

Yeah, she was ok.

Even if she wanted him to hold her so she could cry a little...just a little...about how not ok she really was. Instead?

She lifted her hand, and gave him a very sarcastic thumbs up as an answer.


	4. Chapter 3: Recovery

_**THREE:**_

 ** _RECOVERY_**

* * *

 _"When I was a kid, I used to think about the kind of man I'd grow up to be…I never thought my life would turn out this way…" - Leon Kennedy_

* * *

 _ **Chicago –**_

 ** _Hotel Highland Park - Executive Suite_**

* * *

Rebecca figured she'd end up headed for a clean room or a quarantine or something.

Nope.

It turns out with the BSAA coming to get you, you didn't follow procedures like that. Instead, they poked her into a suite and told her to take a hot shower, get some sleep, and they'd fill her in on what was happening after the clean up efforts came to an end.

She showered, feeling the blood run down the drain in a pink swirl, and she kept picturing Aaron's face as he dove for her.

They one night they'd spent together had been a mistake all around. They both knew it. They'd had a few drinks and took a tumble between the sheets.

Harmless good fun.

But it was business and business and fucking didn't make for a good professional situation. So, they'd parted as friends. It was completely easy going with them.

Well...until he tried to eat her face.

The first shimmer of regret and pain ate around her belly and took her breath away.

Rebecca slipped on the robe hanging on the hook beside the shower and stared at her face in the steamy glass of the mirror above the sink. Aaron had been her friend and now he was dead. Why?

She didn't have any answers. She didn't understand. She rubbed at the grief and the anger and the pain on her face as if she could wipe it away and find the girl she'd been beneath it.

The television in her suite was talking about mass outbreaks of violence in Ontario which meant the spread of the virus had gone international now. She triangulated the position on her computer and studied the other points of origin. All surrounding the great lakes.

What was the connection there?

She was still studying it, when the knock on her door sounded.

She glanced at the clock by the bed and found it was after midnight.

Who came visiting that late?

She picked up Chris's pistol from the desk and kept it in her robe pocket in her hand as she moved the door. She looked through the peep hole and sighed. Naturally, that's who came knocking.

Opening the door, she tilted her damp head, "A little late for a social call, Captain."

Amused, Chris shrugged, "Somehow I figured you wouldn't be sleeping. This isn't resting, B. You should be asleep."

"Hmm." She turned away from the door and he came in behind her, closing it in their wake. He noticed that she set the pistol in her pocket on the desk and shut off the television before she claimed the desk chair and gestured to the big bed for him to sit. "What's the word?"

She noticed he was sweaty and flecked with blood. He was still in his big tactical vest and fatigues. He looked tired and handsome and better somehow than he'd looked at twenty five when she'd known him.

Age had been kind to him in a way that it had taken a baby faced boy and made him a pretty fine man.

The beard on his face was perpetual, it appeared, and flattering in a tasteful goattee style with just the right about of five o'clock shadow. The blue of his eyes beneath the heavy spill of his brows were startling in the dirty face. A good face, heavy jawed and strong, with adorable ears and a hint of something ethnic that she enjoyed. What was it? Hungarian? She could speculate all day about it.

The biggest change from the boy he'd been was those guns of his and she wasn't talking about his assault rifle or his pistol. His arms. Big, roped in muscle, and flattering on his stocky frame. Tall and muscled, he drew the feminine eye simply by existing. His wasn't a face or form you forgot.

He perched on her bed and studied her in the low light of the hotel room. "I've been chasing a man named Glenn Arias. He's a black market bioweapons arms dealer. He's taken over the dealing side of Neo Umbrella and Tricell's operations. He's pedaling his wares to whoever has the dough to buy them. And he's doing it without even attempting to stay in the shadows."

Rebecca tilted his head, watching his face. She saw the flicker of something more there on him, but she didn't press. "What do you know about him?"

Chris shifted and winced a little. She glanced at his shoulder as he did and shook her head, "Take off the vest, tough guy, and let me see."

He shook his head, "I'm fine. Seriously. It's nothing. Arias is using the virus to control the infected, Rebecca. Not just infect them and let them run amuck. He controls them, I've seen it first hand. He can order the undead around. I've never seen anything like it."

"I haven't either."

He winced again and had her sighing.

"Let me see it, Redfield. Stop being such a hard ass."

Rebecca shook her head at him and moved. She leaned over him and the robe gapped enough that, if he was less of a gentleman than he was, he could look right down it and see her cleavage.

But he was a eunuch in the bioterror field. It was well laughed about in the right circles. He didn't look at girls.

And he definitely didn't look at ones he'd known for almost twenty years.

Right.

She lifted his tight left sleeve to peer at the wound there. It was weeping and raw. She clucked her tongue and shifted and the side of her breast brushed against his face as she backed off.

Lord.

So, this is what happened when you took adrenaline from the fight, coupled it with months of self repressed aggression and rage and regret, and lumped in a half naked woman in a robe. You ended up with an urge to turn your face into the chest of an old friend and start motor boating.

What was that?

He knew. It was a way to purge Cathy from his fucking body. That's it. It was just a way to get rid of the woman who plagued him like a goddamn unknown virus.

Rebecca caught the latches at the side of his vest, eyes narrowed at him, "Easy way or hard way, Redfield. You decide."

Chris lifted a brow at her. She looked determined.

And he figured letting her treat his wounded shoulder would take his mind off her cleavage a little.

Shrugging, he rose and let her unhook his vest. She was small and quick, barely to his shoulder in her bare feet. He had a hundred pounds and a foot of height on her, easily. He let the vest fall to the floor and sat back down so she could address his arm.

He reached over his head to grab his shirt and shuck it, letting it fall to the floor.

Her mouth went dry, a little, looking at his ridiculous chest. It was like the time she went with her girlfriends to see 300 in the theater. They'd giggled and cooed and made jokes about going blind from all the eye candy.

Here was she, oogling her oldest comrade because he looked like a walking wet dream. It was pretty amusing.

It was also totally natural. Totally.

In times of immense stress, the brain would do what it could to disconnect from the pain to find pleasure. In this case, she was using his body to distract her from the horror of knowing her lab was toast and her friends were dead and her life was in shambles.

To be fair, he didn't have a six pack - he had like eight or something. He looked like he worked out sun up to sun down. He probably did. With what he did, he had to.

It didn't change the fact that her desperately seeking mind was enjoying the show that fighting bad guys was putting on for her. She liked it. She liked the distraction of it. Apparently, in times of upset and worry, she just needed Chris Redfield to take off her shirt and it would all get better.

She'd wave the white flag and surrender.

Amused, she chuckled at herself.

She went about treating his arm with what was available to them. He had enough first aid tucked into his vest to be useful.

He stared hard at the blank television while she worked. He told her about Arias and the raid that failed to get him in custody. She sensed, again, the hesitation in the story. What was she missing here?

Rebecca mused, "So, you lost him in Mexico?"

"I did. But I knew I needed answers on what he's up to."

"So you hopped a helicopter and came to see me."

He tilted his mouth in a half smile, "I did, indeed. When I saw how trashed your lab was, I figured out he was already after you too. Somebody leaked your research to the wrong side, B. The question is, who?"

She shifted around to wipe away some of the soot from his skin. Something had been burning, clearly, what? Her lab? Had someone set it ablaze? The bad guys had no qualms about killing and torching her world. She was going to return the favor, if it killed her.

"I sent reports to the World Heatlh Organization, Chris. W.H.O. I was hoping to spread the research and get all the world on board for a vaccine A.S.A.P."

He sighed, he closed his eyes, and she taped down the gauze against his cleaned burn. "The leak could have come from anywhere." He spoke softly, shaking his head.

"I cleared my data, Chris, before you got there. But I think they might have already had it."

"I'm pretty sure they do, B. Once they got what they came for, they set fire to your lab."

She shook her head, feeling her chest tighten with the knowledge.

"I'm so sorry. If I'd even suspected, I'd have gotten there sooner."

She shook her head and his hand closed over hers where it laid against his wounded arm, squeezing lightly. She took the comfort and dropped her brow to rest it against his, just for a moment. It was almost a hug. Almost.

And it helped to feel a little less alone.

After a moment, she stepped back from the touch. It took all her strength just to do that. She was no Jill Valentine. She didn't kick asses and go down swinging. She just...wanted somebody to hold her for awhile.

She hated that part of herself that was looking for a white knight. She hated it. She hated even more that she couldn't seem to change it. She was a cliche. She was a joke. She was just a girl looking for a hero.

It was lowering to know it, especially when her IQ was twice as high as the average person. She KNEW how dumb it was to want to be saved.

But it was the truth, no matter how she looked at it.

Rebecca sighed. She answered, quietly, "I was running sequences on all the strains of viruses comparable to A. The closest strain I found was used by the Los Illluminados cult."

Chris opened his eyes, tilting his head at her, "The control, the resistance of complete mental degradation in the subject...it makes sense. The ganados, according to Kennedy, were in control of themselves. Until the main guy gave orders."

Rebecca nodded, "Exactly."

"You think they're connected?"

She sighed, looking a little forlorn, "With what we know now? I can't say yes or no."

Chris nodded and considered things, "Maybe we should go to the horses' mouth for that answer."

Rebecca perched beside him on the bed. She shifted and the robe gaped again, flashing pretty pale collarbone and the suggestion of cleavage. He wondered if it would be considered rude to suggest she get dressed.

She might take it wrong.

Rebecca mused, "Pretty sure most of the relevant bad guys died on that island."

Chris nodded and smirked, "They did. The bad guys did. But the good guy didn't."

Oh.

Rebecca lifted her brows, "You want to find Kennedy and ask him?"

"Yep. Who better?"

"Agreed. When do you want to leave?"

Rebecca nodded, she rose from the bed and had him breathing a little easier. She turned and leaned over her laptop, tapping keys. The robe crept up the back of her thighs and he changed his mind.

Not better.

He sighed a little, "B?"

"Hmm?"

There was a polite way to say this, surely. He was AWFUL with words on a good day. Maybe he should just turn the subject instead.

"How are you really doing?"

She laughed and it cracked, surprising her. Her eyes sprung with tears and she turned, perching on the desk to look at him, "...it's been a pretty shitty couple of months for me. And a really long night. Right now, I'm about two seconds away from getting a bottle of vodka and climbing into my bed for about eighteen hours to sleep."

"You should. You should do that." He rose. She swiped a hand over her face, angrily.

"I'm such a baby. This is real tough guy of me, right? What a girl I am. Getting weepy over my research being stolen and my lab being blown up. That's why I'm a joke in our field."

He hesitated. He warred with himself and finally with his guts on it.

He caught her chin and tugged her face up to look at him. It stole her breath and broke her out of her personal pouting. She was transfixed for a moment looking at his face.

And he said, "You are not a joke. What happened tonight for you? That fucking sucks shit. Get pissed. Let it hurt. And show them what happens when they fuck with your world."

Softly, she breathed, "I'm not like you. I don't do that."

"Aren't you?" He tilted his head at her, "You covered for Coen when you cut him loose. You could have turned him in, but loyalty and strength had you covering for him instead. You survived when the rest of your fucking team died that night and you were barely eighteen. You drug me when I was unconscious in the tunnels after that monster in chains knocked me out. You saved my goddamn life. You're not a joke, Rebecca. Don't do that. Don't sell yourself short because you're the type of power that whispers instead of roars."

Her hands shifted and gripped his wrist, the other settled against his arm and held the smooth skin of his biceps. Lord, this was why he was the leader of men, she thought, he caught your attention and held with the pure truth that he pushed through his words, "The world is blind and stupid, it doesn't see you. But you aren't. And neither am I. You grabbed the gun off my leg and saved me tonight. No thinking. No fear. No hesitation. That's strength. It's why you're not falling apart and drowning now. It's why I came to find you. Help me, and let's end him and get revenge."

Rebecca's mouth was dry, her voice a little hoarse when finally cleared her throat enough to speak. And she said, "From me, it makes sense. But why do you want revenge?"

His thumb swept across her mouth and stole her breath.

They stood for a long moment, watching each other and she jumped when he finally answered, low and gruff, "It's a long story. And a mistake I can't take back. I..."

He shook his head. He let go of her chin. She caught his wrist as he started to turn and held it, "Tell me. What? You want to do this together, let's start with what we're fighting for here."

His hand lifted and swiped away the tear on her cheek. It seemed absentminded. Like an old gesture he did without thinking. Chris intoned, softly, "I got someone killed. Just like you right? You think it was your research that got them killed. For me, it was my job too. Just us, doing our job."

Rebecca tugged him forward. He went and she caught his face. His hands shifted to her arms and hooked around them. She whispered, "It doesn't make them less dead though, does it?"

She watched his face flinch again, showing her pain beneath the armor he wore so well. "No. Just because I didn't break down and cry afterward, doesn't make me any stronger than you, Rebecca. Or any less broken."

Jesus.

Her thumbs hooked beside his ears, anchoring him against her. What was it about him that made her want to keep touching him? Need?

Regret?

Shared loss?

All of it. All of that. And things she couldn't begin to understand mixed in there.

Quietly, she asked, "Just to be clear: You want to make this personal. You don't want this to be a job, Chris. You want it to be a vendetta."

He scanned her face. She didn't look sad now. She looked determined. It was probably echoed on him.

So he gave her the truth, like he'd done as long as he'd known her, "Yeah. You bet your ass it's personal. You sayin it isn't for you?"

Rebecca whispered, watching the snap of the anger on him. It was mirror of hers, obviously. He was her mirror right now. They were on the same damn page. The war they'd been fighting kept dragging them back and costing them everything.

They kept standing in the rain to face the lighting - alone.

But they weren't alone this time.

This time, they were together. They could take the lighting and throw it right back into the storm that brought it down upon their heads.

If they just made it personal.

And stopped playing by the rules to do it.

"It's personal for me. It's never been anything but. It was never the greater good for me, Chris. It was always, always personal. Maybe you think this is your fight. Maybe you think it's always been you in it. But I've been there too. Maybe I wasn't knee deep in blood and bullets. But I was there. I was _there._ Looking for the answers while you scrubbed the threat from the face of the Earth."

He nodded. She watched him, she watched his eyes drift and come back to her face.

Her mouth twitched, "Did you just look down my robe?"

His smile was wolfish and made her heart do a quick flutter in her chest, "It's hard not to. It's...kinda gaping open."

She glanced down and sure enough, it was offering a nice view down to her navel. She should let go of him and tie it tighter.

She left it open.

And she answered, breathlessly, "Whatever helps. When things get like this...you gotta do whatever it takes to deal with it. Who was she?"

His eyes snapped back to her face, and held. "What?"

"Who was she? She's all over you. She's what you lost here. Who was she?"

She'd never once heard anything about him with a woman. Ever. In all the years she'd known him, he'd never once been linked to anyone. Jill, sure, in whispers, but even that was just whispers.

He answered, gruffly and made her pulse quicken, "Somebody worth avenging."

"...I will help you. I'll find out the how - and you can destroy the who."

He tilted his head at her, watching her face, "Deal. You should get some sleep, Rebecca. It's a long flight tomorrow."

"Hmm. I should. I'm pretty tired."

"You wanna be alone for awhile?"

She lifted an eyebrow at him, "You can ask that with a straight face when we're standing here like this? Let go of my arms, Chris."

He did. She kept hold of his face and added, "Now untie my robe."

She watched the pulse in his throat beat. She liked it. She liked that he was nervous. She liked that she wasn't.

He said, softly, "...it's a bad idea, Rebecca."

"Probably." She tugged him closer, heart hammering. She was always doing the right thing. She just wanted to be bad. Just this once. Just this one time on the night where she'd watched her world burn. Just this one time. Was that so wrong? "Do it anyway."

A curious thing that a man so well known for his calm nature was so very raw beneath the surface. He jerked at her robe and spilled her against him. His arms slid under the warm terrycloth and around her back.

Her breasts crushed against his chest as they merged. No groping. No madness.

And yet all kinds of it.

It might have been so many things.

It was simply her naked torso and his pressed together in a very desperate hug. After a moment, he lifted her and she clung around his front. They spilled together on her bed, clinging. Just two people, wrapped together, feeling something besides the pain of loss.

Probably a bad decision. Probably a bad idea. Probably a mistake.

But it didn't feel like one.

As bad decisions went, it could have been a lot worse. They just held each other - desperately. It took the edge off the other's pain. It left something raw but bearable behind.

And it was the first time in months he didn't think of Cathy. It was the first time all night she didn't mourn what she'd lost.

As they just lay there, holding on.


	5. Chapter 4: Broken Dolls

**_A/N:_** _This is not newly written, sadly, it's just waiting in my folder to go up here and I don't want it to expire and disappear. But I haven't written a word, literally, for any of my stuff in ages. So, this is all I've got for the time being. A bit of a brain break for me it seems - sadly my last one lasted years. I'm still reading, just not writing any of my own stuff. Between trolls and drama in my personal life and on here - I'm enjoying the relaxation of going back to reading quietly in the shadows._

* * *

 _ **FOUR:**_

 **Broken Dolls**

* * *

 _"When I was a kid, I used to think about the kind of man I'd grow up to be…I never thought my life would turn out this way…" - Leon Kennedy_

* * *

 _ **Colorado Springs –**_

 _ **Garden of the Gods**_

* * *

Any answer he wanted was at the bottom of this glass, he was sure of that. Positive. The Garden of the Gods would have the answers to his nearly crippling depression. The taciturn nature of his existence guaranteed he was going to find the truth at the end of the longest night of his life.

Surely.

Truly.

Utterly.

He lifted the glass and shot it back, hissing.

Still no answers, it seemed, just more questions.

The first of which was when would the nightmares stop? When? He went to sleep, he saw his team. He shot them. They died, growling and snarling and screaming.

He woke up, he saw his team. He hallucinated them like some kind of junkie strung out looking for a fix. He'd scratched the skin of his arm trying to drive pain into his brain to stop seeing their hollowed eyed ghosts at every turn.

When did he stop seeing them?

How did he drown them?

The booze wasn't doing it. He'd tried, god knows, to lose them under the rush of empty nights with too much scotch or vodka or anything with a higher proof count than a bottle of beer. He'd tried.

How did he lose himself?

He'd tried, first, random fucking. He'd pick up a girl and bury himself between her thighs and eclipse the pain of his loss for a single moment. Somewhere between the fact that his god damn arm was still half gimpy, and his brain still half dead, he figured at least his dick still worked right. He stuck it to some willing young things and got a few moments recompense for his own internal destruction.

But it never lasted.

He'd sober up. She'd leave. He'd crawl back from the primordial ooze of whatever shithole he'd fallen asleep with her in and stare at his reflection. Old. Tired. Used up. Looking like hammered shit, smelling worse, feeling dead. The staples of a hero, it seemed.

Finally, when he realized his fucking gimp hand was failing him, he'd given notice of furlough to his office. They'd looked at him like he was nuts. And he'd said, "I'm entitled to a god damn vacation. I'm taking it. That's what being your own fucking boss means. Get off my back."

He used his gimp hand now to make a fist and it shook, painfully, weakly.

Angrily, Leon threw the glass in it's wimpy grip across the room to shatter - throwing a plume of smoke and fire up from the angrily disturbed fireplace in the corner.

A pretty place, the resort, as if he gave a fuck about that anyway.

He was here to drink away his sorrows.

It didn't matter how pretty the trees were beyond the window. It didn't matter how lovely the atmosphere. Or cute the waitress. Or peaceful the land.

He didn't give a shit.

He was here drowning his misery.

Maybe he'd get lucky and he'd go into a coma or something and stay there: a gimp plagued by nightmares unable to deal.

First the department shrink had given him "tools to cope" but that was all bandaid on a bullet wound. It was, literally, trying to stem arterial blood loss when you were mostly dead already. The answer was to simply quit. He'd been entertaining the notion for awhile.

Why not now?

Why not?

Who the hell were the good guys anymore anyway?

It's not like he could anything about it anyway. He couldn't even hold his damn gun in his gimpy hand now.

He picked up the glass and went to toss it back.

There was the clack of boots on the shiny floor behind him and he mused, "Bring me another bottle, would ya sweetheart? This ones about empty."

"How about we try another form of self destruction?"

He lifted his eyes to find Jill Valentine crossing the floor toward him. She was in jeans and a blue sweater. It dipped low at the bosom and left her long blonde hair around her in pretty pale waves.

He laughed, lightly, and leaned back in his seat, "Come to poke at the cripple?"

She tilted her head, curiously, "Are you? I'd heard you were on a vacation."

"Yeah. Because I'm a fucking gimp." He held his fist out and clenched it. She watched until it started to tremble. She saw the fear, so fast, so brief, shoot over his face before wry derision took its place. "See? Gimp."

He started to lower the fist and she caught it, surprising him. She gripped it in hers, holding it aloft. "Not yet. Hold the fist."

"I can't."

She held his arm, keeping it up. "Hold the fist, Leon."

His arm increased in its shaking, it shook from wrist to elbow. He looked a little panicked, "Let go, Jill. I can't hold it."

"Not yet. Keep the fist." She shifted her eyes from his fist to his face. She was so calm. The pale blue of her eyes soothed him, encouraging even as it offered no quarter, "Keep it."

The shaking spread to his shoulder. "It hurts, damnit Jill, let me drop it."

"No." She tucked it against her belly, holding it up, "Keep holding it. Let it hurt."

He watched her face. She watched his. The shaking slowed, the pain edged into burning ache, and he was able to lower his arm without losing the fist.

She nodded. She spread the fingers and started to rub his palm, smoothing at the ache, "Better?"

He continued to watch her face, "How'd you know?"

She shrugged a delicate shoulder, "The P-30 manipulated the muscles. It offered rebound that was so painful, it left me gimpy. I found the best way to recover was to power through the weakness until the muscle began to relax on its own. Fighting against the tension made it worse. So I just...waited it out."

Leon watched her shift up the sleeve of his jacket. She did trigger point release on the muscles of his forearm and his elbow, digging in until it hurt and she found the tension, and running her fingers up the tight muscle until it softened. She rubbed at the scar on his forearm, working the inflamed tissues until they audibly popped to release.

She pushed their palms together, forcing his wrist into various stages of flexion. She eyed him, drolly, "You been doing any physical therapy?"

He shrugged, pouting a little, "Some."

"Leon..."

"Some, Jill. But it's been months. The hand is a loss."

She lifted a brow. He echoed it. And she answered, "It's not a loss until it's cut off, Kennedy. Stop being a cry baby and fix it."

Wow.

So, much for a sweet coddling from a pretty girl. She wasn't there to soothe him, it seemed, but to push him. He started to pull his hand back and she tugged him up from his chair instead. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Time to see how gimpy you really are."

* * *

The heavy sounds of fighting filled the little gym. The resort was empty, save for the two people beating the shit out of each other in the center of it.

She wore a sports bra and her panties. He was in jeans and bare feet. They were both sweaty, both tired, both bruised. Impromptu training meant wearing what you were in.

She hip checked him and threw him out, watching him roll through it. He reversed, spun low, and took her feet.

As she went down, Leon buffalo kicked her from one hand, sprang forward into a front tuck and was there when she hit her back to roll her up, toss her through it, and pin her face down on the floor.

Jill spit her sweaty hair out of her eyes and muttered, against the mat, "See? Now grab my ponytail with your bad hand."

"...no."

"Do it, you puss. And don't let go."

He grabbed her hair at the place where it met the back of her scalp. He gripped it and tugged. His arm sang in pain and he almost let go.

She shouted, "No! Pull me up! Do NOT let go."

He jerked, she let him, and he shouted in rage at the pain that lanced from wrist to shoulder to hip. But he got her to her knees, cursing in three languages. Jill nodded, face flushed with exertion, eyes sharp. "There. Now hold the fist."

His arm shook. It trembled.

On her knees, she watched his face above her. "Let the pain in. Don't fight it, just let it wash."

He looked down at her, watching the sweat slide down her face and drip into her cleavage. "Why are you helping me?"

"You said we were friends once. I'm here to show you what that means. It means no matter how big of an ass you think you are, I'm a bigger one."

Leon laughed, lightly, eyes twinkling now. "What an image. I should probably check though."

"Check what?"

"Your ass. I should check to see who's is bigger."

"Yeah?" Her teeth flashed in a grin, "How's the hand?"

"Good."

"You wanna let go of my hair?"

"...not really."

Her eyes flashed a little, "Hmm. That's not very friendly."

He angled her face up to him, "Seems pretty fucking friendly where I'm standing."

"Yeah? Friends don't fuck I think. Last time I checked."

"Maybe we're not friends than. I take it back."

"I don't think you can." She nearly laughed. But his face? Not laughing. Instead she grabbed the waist band of his jeans, "But I'll compare our asses to be sure."

She tugged and he came down to mirror her on their knees.

He didn't let go of her hair. He angled her face to him and looked at her. Her hand slid down his sweaty back and into his jeans to grip the ass in question. A good look, she thought, not friendly at all.

He finally let go of her hair to echo the hands on his ass and put them on hers.

It was the first time he didn't think about burying himself in a bottle of booze to lose his way...and instead thought of losing himself inside of Jill Valentine.

Apparently, one could really find rebirth in the Garden of the Gods.


End file.
